Masters of the Universe

Masters of the Universe is probably the one franchise that would have been right up my alley, but for which I was just too young. While the legendary action figures were produced by Mattel from 1982-1988, the no less legendary Filiation animated series ran only rather short-lived from 1983-1984. At least in Germany, the radio play series was also very popular, which was produced until the end of the 80s. Being born in ’86, I was too young for all that. When I started watching cartoons the Turtles and Batman were already there, nobody talked about He-Man in the schoolyard anymore.

 

Some older neighborhood kids had the action figures, of course, and I got to play with them a few times – probably the first action figures I ever had in my hands. I always knew that MotU had a special status, but I couldn’t really get into it. There was no Internet and Batman was much more important anyway. I loved action figures as a kid, but I certainly wasn’t aware of the groundbreaking influence of MotU figures. That only came with time as I became more interested in pop cultural phenomena and their history. The immense influence that He-Man and co had on the toy sector has always fascinated me. I would have liked to collect matching tabletop models, even though I never had the action figures.

 

MotU and Tabletop

 

Until today there was no tabletop implementation of the Motu franchise, only a few board game adaptations, which had nothing to do with our hobby. However, in the 80’s there were tabletop miniatures from Grenadier Models, which have been oop for a long time and are real collector’s items today. Of course they were modeled according to the standards of that time and were rather 25mm in size, but they still have their lovers today. You can find an overview here in the Lost Minis Wiki.

 

The tabletop gap is finally closed twice. For a while now, two officially licensed games have been in development, with distribution strictly limited to North America and Europe respectively. For Europe, Archon Studios is developing a board game with tabletop miniatures (32mm). In August, the Kickstarter for financing will be launched. You can be curious about the campaign, the hype seems to be huge. Here’s more info. For a real tabletop you still have to take the miniatures and adapt any suitable skirmish system so that it fits.

 

Quest Miniatures

 

After the discontinuation of the Grenadier series, there had been no suitable MotU miniatures for many years, until the small Canadian forge Quest Miniatures commissioned some unofficial figures from none other than Boris Woloszyn (at that time he was probably easier to get hold of). They produced two sets of 6 miniatures each, all of which turned out spectacularly great.

 

 

Another set and two single miniatures followed, but unfortunately they were no longer kneaded by Boris, which is unfortunately clearly visible. As a Woloszyn fan, I had to get the first two sets immediately, but then initially gave preference to other projects. This is finally changing and I have started painting.

 

In the coming posts, I’ll first look at Quest Miniatures models before moving on to some custom miniatures.

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